“If you’re worried about optics in this market,” said general manager Dave Nonis, “it’s going to be a disaster.”

Maple Leafs management — which includes Brendan Shanahan, who is a very big part of this decision — has extended the contract of coach Randy Carlyle for two more years, smothering one hysterical debate and triggering another.

Heads are doubtless spinning. I can hear the yowling. But it was the right call for this team. A coaching jolt would let everybody else off the hook.

It means:

The players have not tuned out Carlyle and presumably that became evident in exit interviews last month. No coup afoot, no muscle-flexing by the handful that might have management’s ear, not that there appears to be any Leaf from among this bunch who have either earned such distinction or tried to assume it.

Out of all the retreads on the NHL coaching carousel, nobody available — Mike Babcock removing himself from the equation — presented a superior alternative to the guy already in situ.

Blame for the fiasco of 2013-2014 — more narrowly, the plummet out of playoff territory from mid-March on — while rightfully spread around was primarily down to the group on the ice, not the man behind the bench. There are, in fact, way too many men behind the bench in the NHL these days, a weird metastasizing of responsibility. Carlyle inherited two of his assistants from the Ron Wilson era. All three were let go Thursday, including Carlyle’s long-time adjutant Dave Farrish. Stripping a coach of his staff is hardly revolutionary, nor an intercession that will satisfy Carlyle’s critics. But assistants are most directly responsible for special teams and those — especially the PK — killed Toronto in the gruesome conclusion to the season.

A team that free-fell out of the post-season mix won’t look radically different when October rolls ’round due to long-term contracts awarded to players, salary cap pressures and a middling cohort of free agents available this summer. If nothing else, Carlyle has better insight into this crew, present at their best and their worst.

Whether they like it or not, the players will have to embrace the style of play that Carlyle has steadfastly preached — protecting the puck defensively, strong fore-check, and cycle over rush. Many have observed this is not the system most compatible with the Leaf personnel as assembled, thus Carlyle was a poor fit for this roster. But many were the nights that the team obviously disregarded Carlyle’s instructions, did it their way, and came to ruin. This was monstrously evident as panic set in, when everything went catastrophically pear-shaped. What worked in free-wheeling October — 10-4-0 — became counter-productive after the Olympic break, when all teams tightened up, removed the seams in their game, became more hockey-wizened and stingier. Against top-drawer opposition, most impressively that 4-3 OT win over Boston on April 3 — one of only two victories after March 13 — the Leafs showed they were capable of rising to the challenge when properly self-motivated and heedful. Yet that industrious and conscientious buying-in vanished against too many low-wattage adversaries. All the Leaf vulnerabilities were exposed. Weak from the neck up, repeatedly making the wrong choices and, most unacceptable, astonishingly soft to play against.

That’s the riddle Carlyle has to solve. Where did all the mojo go, with essentially the same players, from a year previously?

His Leafs were mentally lax under duress and hockey dumb. Though it must be acknowledged that they also got a whole bunch of puny goaltending when Jonathan Bernier was sidelined with injury.

That’s the part that didn’t ring true during a conference call with Carlyle and Nonis yesterday, the coach claiming that the “compete” was very much there when the Leafs fell into a hideous trough of eight consecutive losses. It was not. Dropping their last home game to Winnipeg, a desultory nadir point, the Leafs were rightly ushered off the ice with a cascade of boos.

“I look at the Winnipeg game from a perspective that, we just didn’t have what was required in the tank,” said Carlyle. “We were out of gas. And it didn’t seem like we could generate any energy. I didn’t look at it as a lack of effort. I found that it was mind-boggling that we could come out and perform to that level. But that’s what happens in pro sports.”

That’s simply too imprecise an explanation. And this is where Carlyle has to do better. While he didn’t lose the dressing room — or he’d be gone now — he was unable to bridge the gap in system conviction. It had gone on too long by then, as Carlyle admitted in his post-season press conference and again yesterday. “The consistency of our compete and our defensive zone coverage was the area of concern right from the opening month of the season. We harped on it, harped on it, harped on it. Yet we were winning with it. When the season tightened up, from the Olympic break on, we got bit by it.”

If March was hockey-horrendous for Carlyle, the past month, out of the hockey picture, his status so casually dissected publicly, has been worse. That’s the lot of coaches on the bubble, of course. “The last month has been trying, to say the least, for everyone involved. It’s been very tenuous.”

This coach, however, obviously has the confidence of his employers. Nonis and Shanahan have lashed themselves to the Carlyle mast.

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